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I'm hopeful about the new Mac Pro, but expect to be disappointed. After all this time limiting internal expansion, I expect Apple to cripple it. Missing standard storage bays, for example. I expect proprietary storage, and not much of it.

Oh, and when I tell Safari to Never Auto-play videos on YouTube, maybe instead of auto-playing when I load a video or a channel (despite the very clear "Never"), Apple will have actually fixed this in macOS 25...?

I expect that there is a demo of the iOS and MacOS updates, as usual. Since they cleared the deck with an MBP update recently, there is really very little to be updated now - there is the 12" Macbook, which is a possibility if it gets Icelake (because I don't think they go ARM yet), and the Mac Pro. I really wish they would show something there. I would be ecstatic if it were AMD Epyc, but I expect not.

We have been over internal storage before in this forum - I say that it is unnecessary in the era of Thunderbolt and USB 3.x

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

While on a technical level, I completely agree, I am not sure it makes sense for Apple to switch to AMD for just one or two generations. And yes, I expect Apple to switch to ARM in 2020. The only question is: can we rule out dev machines akin to the P4-based Intel ones?

The new Mac Pro is pretty good. Far better than I'd feared. Smaller than I expected.

• Tower design with cross-flow cooling. Good.
• CPU: A new (single socket) Intel Xeon, up to 28 cores. No Epyc or ThreadRipper from AMD. 300W allocated, with a cooler good enough for unconstrained operation at all times. Good.
• RAM: 6-channel DDR4 2933 (ECC), 12 (twelve!) slots - I'd hoped for just 8. Really Good
note: Speed could be higher, but I'd take the slot count any day. Capacity up to 1.5 TB, so it accepts up to 128-GB modules.
• PCIe slots: 8 (4 double-width, 4 single-width) slots. Super Good.
note: It is not clear if they're PCIe 4 or PCIe 3. At least one of the singles is pre-populated, with an i/o card.
• Graphics: at least two cards announced: Radeon 580X (a 590?) or Radeon Vega II (32GB) - don't know this one. Apple claims it is the world's most powerful graphics card. Good.
note1: No mention of peace with nVidia so far.
note2: one of the cards announced is a dual-GPU card, with a 4-slot width.
• No word on storage that I've seen. Doesn't appear to be much room for drives inside. Concerning.
• Power supply: 1,400W PSU standard. So it can handle maxed-out CPU + a ton of graphics cards. Very good - assuming it remains efficient under smaller loads.
• Ports: 2x 10Gb Ethernet, 2x USB-A, 4x USB-C/thunderbolt, headphone jack. Might be a few more ports, can't see everything clearly in the pictures. Good.
• $6,000 starting price. Concerning.
note: I'd hoped for a $2K starting price for a minimal config, closer to what the cheesegraters offered.
• Available: Fall (autumn). Which is September through November.

Overall, it looks pretty darned good. I want to know the storage details, but it's not the automatic write-off I was expecting. Not a TrashPro II.

The new Mac Pro is pretty good. Far better than I'd feared. Smaller than I expected.

• Tower design with cross-flow cooling. Good.
• CPU: A new (single socket) Intel Xeon, up to 28 cores. No Epyc or ThreadRipper from AMD. 300W allocated, with a cooler good enough for unconstrained operation at all times. Good.
• RAM: 4-channel DDR4 2933 (ECC), 12 (twelve!) slots - I'd hoped for just 8. Really Good
note: Speed could be higher, but I'd take the slot count any day. Capacity up to 1.5 TB, so it accepts up to 128-GB modules.

I may have missed something, but those Xeons take 6 memory channels, so it is likely 6 channels with 2 slots on each for an insane amount of bandwidth.

• PCIe slots: 8 (4 double-width, 4 single-width) slots. Super Good.
note: It is not clear if they're PCIe 4 or PCIe 3. At least one of the singles is pre-populated, with an i/o card.

• Graphics: at least two cards announced: Radeon 580X (a 590?) or Radeon Vega II (32GB) - don't know this one. Apple claims it is the world's most powerful graphics card. Good.
note1: No mention of peace with nVidia so far.
note2: one of the cards announced is a dual-GPU card, with a 4-slot width.

The Radoen 580X is a card that exists in the world, it's the rough equivalent of the 1060. It is not the 590, for whatever reason.

The Vega is a card we haven't seen. It is likely the card that AMD called Radeon VII, codename Vega20, a card that is the rough equivalent of an RTX 2080 on gaming. Since AMD is not quite as good at making use of that compute performance for gaming, it should beat the 2080 by a handsome margin for compute - but that's not why it's "the most powerful graphics card", because it would probably still not beat the 2080Ti or NVidia's insanely overpriced Volta cards. No, it is that because Apple has put two of them on the same card, something they can do because they're comparatively tiny, with their 7nm process and HBM2 memory.

Anyway: Some quick math shows that Apple appears to be running those cards at about 1700 MHz, which is what AMD sells them with in the gaming segment. This is good news, because Apple has been underclocking its GPUs in everything for years, both in the trashcan and the iMac/iMac Pro.

• No word on storage that I've seen. Doesn't appear to be much room for drives inside. Concerning.
• Power supply: 1,400W PSU standard. So it can handle maxed-out CPU + a ton of graphics cards. Very good - assuming it remains efficient under smaller loads.
• Ports: 2x 10Gb Ethernet, 2x USB-A, 4x USB-C/thunderbolt, headphone jack. Might be a few more ports, can't see everything clearly in the pictures. Good.
• $6,000 starting price. Concerning.
note: I'd hoped for a $2K starting price for a minimal config, closer to what the cheesegraters offered.
• Available: Fall (autumn). Which is September through November.

I agree about the price, as it leaves a massive umbrella for the iMac to fill, but it wasn't unexpected. The cheesegraters started at $2500 (which is what I based my most infamous .sig on).

Overall, it looks pretty darned good. I want to know the storage details, but it's not the automatic write-off I was expecting. Not a TrashPro II.

This is what I expected them to do, but I don't understand why it took them so long. This wasn't really revolutionary.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

The MacPro pages had not been updated at the time. Checking the specs now:

• The RAM and SSD storage are mounted on the back side of the logic board. The case lifts off, exposing both sides. There's a separate blower for components on the back side. The front fan alignment is aimed at the working side of the board.
• RAM ceiling may be 1.5 TB or 2.0 TB - the specs page says both in different places. Most likely the actual ceiling is 3.0 TB, with Apple unable to certify that number due to 256GB engineering samples not being available yet. Some CPUs may only use 8 of the slots.
• The storage is 2x M.2 slots. It's not clear if they can take standard M.2s, or if they're limited to proprietary Apple M.2s, as earlier MacBook Pros were.
• There appear to be 2x bonus SATA ports on the logic board above the top PCIe slot. Not mentioned in the specs, or anywhere else for that matter. There is also some empty space above them, perhaps enough for a couple drives. They'd be downstream of the CPU cooler though.
• Apple plans to offer an MPX module RAID solution. So a box that fills 4 PCIe bays, covers 2x PCIe slots, includes a drive interface card and HD bays. No pictures yet to confirm. Using full-length PCIe card space, that might allow 6x 3.5" bays in addition to the card.
• According to the measurements, the new MacPro is only slightly smaller than the cheese grater. Width and height are about the same. Depth is a little less.

Either the new MP will come Mojave-compatible, or someone made a boo boo. Supplied software includes iTunes.

Sign in with Apple is nice. I'll definitely be using that. I never sign in with FB or Google, as I always create a spam email for that, but this would take place of that nicely.

New Mac Pros are nice, design is super nice, but the price is just going up and up and up with every iteration. They used to be $1699!! When the video first came up and they showed the circle, I thought another trashcan Mac Pro and was disappointed. Luckily, it was just the circular latch to open the case. Love the new cheese grater design on the Mac Pro as well as the new "cinema displays." Didn't see that coming.

From Arstechnica.
edit: I want to know what chip is inside that Afterburner card.

New iPad OS has some nice iPad specific features including a more dedicated Files app, SD card reader direct functionality, more split view options, and mouse support. I also would love widgets to the left. I rarely use widgets because they are so annoying. Having the weather and calendar widgets to the left at all times would be so nice for me.

tvOS has support for Xbox and PS controllers which is huge and will enable a new class of tv games.

I may have missed something, but those Xeons take 6 memory channels, so it is likely 6 channels with 2 slots on each for an insane amount of bandwidth.

"4 channel" was a brain fart. I meant to write 6. However, Apple specifies the 1.5TB RAM config requires the 24- or 28-core CPU. This might mean it's 4-channel for most of the CPUs, and 6-channel for the 24/28s. Though they do give a 12-stick memory config for all the CPUs.

edit - they're all 6-channel, with some Xeons having lower memory ceilings. Seems to be a price tier thing, recent Xeons with the higher ceilings have dramatically higher prices. Look for the "M" and "L" suffix on part numbers, indicating successively higher mem ceilings. Compared to otherwise identical Xeons, the higher ceiling models have 2x to 4x the price.

Originally Posted by P

I agree about the price, as it leaves a massive umbrella for the iMac to fill, but it wasn't unexpected. The cheesegraters started at $2500 ...

Ignoring the TrashPro, the new tower shouldn't have started higher than $3,000. Double that is awkward, and helpful for Ryzen/Threadripper sales.

Originally Posted by P

This is what I expected them to do, but I don't understand why it took them so long. This wasn't really revolutionary.

Gotta agree, 2+ years to roll out a cheesegrater update. Maybe they tried something else internally, and abandoned it late in the game.

I don't mind charging people through the nose for a 28-core with four Radeon VII chips. I have a problem with the base model being an eight-core with a 580X and 256 gigs of flash still costing like it does. Xeons cost lots of money, and those motherboards with lots of memory slots and ECC support are expensive to make, but not this expensive. I realize that Apple doesn't want to compete with itself and the iMac Pro, but still. You can get a mini with six cores and HT for $1099. The base Mac Pro is barely faster CPU-wise - it has a much faster GPU, but assume for a second that you don't care about that or can use an eGPU - so you're paying five grand for the expandability.

(Yes, this is the exact same argument I made all those years ago for the Nehalem cheesegraters.)

I also think that it was a PR mistake to charge $999 for a monitor stand, because that is now the news from this event.

The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.

I personally want the expandability, far more than the top-end CPU. We used to get slots in nearly every computer. Now you have to buy the very top-end Mac to have expandability. Admittedly an improvement over last week - no Mac had proper expandability, regardless of price.

Actually, my cheesegrater has adequate CPU power, and good expandability. If the OS continues to support it, I'm happy to stay put. But loss of OS support will likely force retirement at some point, just as happened with my Quad G5. The hardware remained up to the task, fast enough for my needs.

Gotta agree on the monitor stand. It's formed aluminum, with some springs & bearings. Probably costs under $50 to make.

I’m beginning to get the feeling Apple knew exactly what they were doing when they did the separate monitor stand.

It’s got buzz it wouldn’t have had otherwise, no one who would actually buy the thing cares, and most importantly, it’s not really that out-there when it comes to Apple behavior, so they might get made fun of, but it won’t actually lower people’s opinion of the company.

1. Does the XDR monitor sell for $5999 and include the stand, or,
2. Does it sell for $5999 with the stand AND you have the option to buy a SECOND (separate) Apple stand if you need it (for $999), or,
3. Is Apple really just selling a screen with nothing to attach it to, no stand in the box...?

In the keynote he said that it "sold separately," but he wasn't explicitly clear on saying if you "also need to buy" in order to have the monitor ready out of the box.

I really can't fathom that Apple would go for Option 3, at any price point. Otherwise, it would be like this all over again:

Originally Posted by Doc HM

So the hospital bed frame is stainless steel. I'm registering the domain rustgate.com In five years it will be worth a fortune.

Or just ask anyone who has used Apple's waterproof stainless steel WATCHes.

are they expecting people to wall mount these monitors (for point of sale or kiosk type displays I can see it) so that's why the stand is separate? My tv is wall-mounted on a swing arm. If I were wall mounting one of these I'd hate to pay for a stand if not needed - but $999 is highway robbery for something that doesn't turn on. Let the secondary market ripoffs commence!

The former Mac Pro (formerly Power Mac) was for Photoshop and video editing and some content creation such as coding. All of that stuff has now been relegated to the iMac Pro. Only hardcore video editors may apply for the new Mac Pro. It serves no other purpose. Definitely not in the market for one.

Still curious what new fangled processors are in their custom FPGA Afterburner card.

The drives are mounted sideways instead of straight-in, as previous cheesegraters did. Reason: the new MP is the same width as the old one, but the logic board is mounted inwards from the backside for RAM, storage, and airflow. So there's less space in front of the logic board.

No word on prices. Promise apparently wants to sell the MPX RAID module pre-populated, and the drive cage with one drive already included. It looks to me like OWC or others will be able to create similar mounts, unless patents get in the way.

• You have to unplug all cables from the MacPro before you can pull the case off. You can't just pop the door open for access at any time.

The case bottom is solid on the back, at the bottom of the expansion zone. So unless you want to cut the bottom out, you'll be unplugging everything. And no access while the machine is running.

• There is a finer mesh grille behind the ultra-coarse holes on front & back. But no gap for a filter between the two grilles. Protection against poking long metal objects directly into the works.

The Mac Pro doesn't look right to me, not sure why, maybe the metal handles or the holes are too big. It looks like those fan made renders you used to get of the Powermac back in the day, there was one that looked like a vintage microphone, and a site had a lot of different ones, applele.com or something like that, can't remember the name.

The Mac Pro doesn't look right to me, not sure why, maybe the metal handles or the holes are too big. It looks like those fan made renders you used to get of the Powermac back in the day, there was one that looked like a vintage microphone, and a site had a lot of different ones, applele.com or something like that, can't remember the name.

It has a 1.4 kW power supply, which is at the upper end of things. If you live in a country that has 110 V, 1.4 kW could actually be the limit that power sockets can handle. (A friend and former colleague of mine had to have special power rails installed at work for his workstations, because it would just trigger the circuit breaker.)